Friends of Marple Memorial Park Task Days
The Friends hold regular task days in the park on the last Saturday of each month in the winter and the middle and last Saturday from March to November. Everyone is welcome to join in for as long or as short they wish during the specified times. Please note that children and young people under 18 must be accompanied by a responsible adult.
If you are interested becoming a volunteer with us please get in touch and we will add you to our Task Day notifications.
We like to keep a record of what we get up and here are details of past task days.
Boules Court Refurbishment
During recent task days we've been refurbishing the boules court on the park. The wooden boundaries have been rotting away and although some of the top layers were in good condition, when we dug down we found the layers underneath were pretty much all in need of replacement. We have been making some good progress on ordinary task days but we decided to make a bigger effort to finish it all off. Four of us worked on both a Friday and a Saturday recently to complete the job. Thanks especially to these volunteers and to those who helped in the earlier sessions during task days. We’ll now work in consultation with the boules players to make the surface within the boards best for playing – and let’s hope for more summer weather to come, to allow boule/petanque to be played!
Saturday's task day threatened to be spoiled by rain but in the event the early shower meant it was much easier to do the weeding today!
Indeed that was our main task because everything is growing so fast at this time of year including the things that we don't want in our beds. As well as this, we were able to get to our notice board for the first time in a long while and cleaned up the perspex panel and removed the old notices. We renewed some of the flowers in "Danny's pots" and we also made some more progress with the boule court - although this is proving to be slower than we'd anticipated, we're now beyond half way and hope to finish it soon.
We're delighted that the new extension of the play park has been opened along with the woodland path that's been funded by the contractors, Wilmott Dixon after proposal put forward by the Civic Society. In both areas they have sown some grass seed which we are keen is left to its own devices to make the whole area look so much better.
Heat Wave in the Park!
The extremely high temperatures on Saturday meant we had to be particularly careful with all our wonderful volunteers to make sure we stayed hydrated and well. We put in special measures so that everybody took a break after every 30 minutes and we had plenty of water on hand. Understandably many volunteers preferred not to be out in the heat. A small number of us managed to cover off some important jobs including, not surprisingly, doing some watering, particularly of those flowers in pots. We were only able to do a limited amount of weeding and tidying up, which will become increasingly important as the weeks go on. However we were able to litter pick as always, carry on our programme of treating benches and we made a little bit more progress with the new boules court surround.
Summer work in the park
We were blessed with another fine day for our work day on Saturday, although it was very close and warm and therefore tiring for all our volunteers. We managed to do a lot of things that are priorities at this time of year. The recent rain, added to the warm weather, has given the weeds in the flower beds an unwelcome boost so that was one of the main jobs. We also cut back some of the lavender, got rid of some bamboo and planted the remainder of the bulbs very kindly donated by Dobbies. The grass has grown quickly too, so we did as much edging as we could; along the flower beds, around the flagpole and along some of the paths. We also tended to Danny Winter's planters which are looking very colourful.
At last we managed to make a start on the renovation of the boule court. Despite having done some trial digs a few weeks ago we found that when we got down to it, the under layer of wood was also rotten as well as the top layer. Not to be deterred we excavated both layers and use the wood delivered to build a completely new boundary edge at the top end of the court. This was hard work but we had a really skillful team on the job and made tremendous progress. There's obviously much more to do, but having figured out what's involved, the rest will be much easier.
Thanks again to all the support and donations from the passersby in the park.
Sunny Saturday at the Flower Beds!
We were blessed with good weather again at our latest task day. The rain had helped to get everything growing again, including the weeds! We had plenty of things to plant too. Firstly some more of our volunteers brought some of the cosmos they'd grown at home from seeds we'd supplied. We also had a very generous donation of bulbs from Dobbie's in Otterspool. It's a bit late for some of them but even if they don't flower this year, we'll see them next year.
Other jobs include tidying the beds including the memorial bed and those around the clematis at the bowling green fence, some sapling maintenance, general tidying and mowing work at the Band Room, litter picking, edge trimming and plenty of weeding, both on the beds and on the pathways.
Thanks for all the well-wishers' comments as they passed by. It is always appreciated!
Watering was the priority!
We started the session with very pleasant cooler working conditions than we've had lately but the sun came out later and got it back to being warm for working. Given the very dry weather lately, we spent a lot of time and effort watering the beds. We're also making sure our emerging grass seed is getting enough water. We also weeded the flower beds and memorial tubs, put in some new bedding plants (bought via our local Scouts and Guides) and tidied up the edges round the beds. We also weeded and tidied up around the war memorial and under a lot of the benches. The cup of tea at break time was very welcome!
